K-12 Sexual Assault in the Media

Each school day, when students should be benefitting from a safe and healthy school environment conducive to learning, sexual harassment, assault, and other forms of intimidation compromise their lives at alarming rates. Sexual harassment/assault impair students’ ability to concentrate, compromise their education, cause dropping out, and lead to self-destructive behaviors and suicide.

To illustrate, a recent survey found that nearly one-third (32 percent) of students who experienced harassment reported not wanting to go to school as a result of the harassment, and girls were more likely than boys to report harassment affecting them in this way. Sex-based harassment can be very damaging to the lives of women and girls, both in its emotional impact and in its impact on their education. Feeling unsafe at school has been correlated with declining academic performance, skipping school, and dropping out.

Sex-based harassment continues into middle and high school. In a nationwide survey of students in grades 8-11, 81 percent reported experiencing sexual harassment during their school lives. And in a recent survey of 7-12th grade students, nearly half (48 percent) experienced some form of sexual harassment during the 2010-11 school year, with a vast majority of those students (87 percent) re- porting that the harassment had a negative effect on them. Both studies found that girls were more likely than boys to have experienced harassment.

And among lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students, the numbers are even higher—in a study of LGBT students in grades 6-12, 85 percent of respondents reported being verbally harassed and 40 percent reporting being physically harassed at school because of their sexual orientation. Close to two-thirds (64 percent) were verbally harassed because of their gender expression. Another study found that LGBT youth were twice as likely to have been verbally harassed at school as their non-LGBT peers.

For girls and young women who drop of school due to sexual- or gender-based harassment, the long-term economic impact can be devastating. Young women who don’t graduate from high school have higher rates of unemployment than men who drop out; those who do get jobs make significantly lower wages than male dropouts. Women lacking a high school degree are also more likely to have to rely on safety net programs than their male peers or men and women who have graduated from high school and college.

And although men at every level of education make more than women with similar educational backgrounds, the wage gap is particularly high among high school dropouts: the typical woman who starts but does not finish high school is paid only 71 percent of what her male counterpart is paid. Female dropouts are more likely to live in poverty than both men and women with higher educational attainment. And children raised in such situations may find it difficult to escape poverty themselves; studies have shown that being poor at birth is a strong predictor of future poverty status, and children in poverty have lower odds of experiencing upward mobility across generations. Thus, the economic impact of sex-based harassment on women and their families can be overwhelming.

Innumerable cases in the media illustrate the impact of sexual harassment/assault upon students. Although the most dramatic cases dominate reporting, the daily cases of sexual harassment, assault, retaliation, and the deplorable response of schools are largely unknown to the public. These cases compromise and destroy lives at an alarming rate.

Below are examples of daily sexual harassment/assault reported by students at Berkeley, CA, High School, now under investigation by OCR for violation of Title IX. More examples of pervasive harassment in OCR cases appear here.